Matt Lang first fell in love with bamboo while hiking in Hawaii about 12 years ago.

“We were walking for what felt like hours and hours through streams and over waterfalls, and all around us were these tall, gorgeous stands of bamboo. I just fell in love with it.”

Back home in Pitt Meadows, Lang decided to create his own little bamboo heaven, but when he went looking to start his collection, all he could find were the standard, invasive running kinds, mainly golden timber bamboo (Phyllostachys area) and black-stemmed bamboo (Phyllostachys nigra).

Matt Lang with bamboo at Dr. Sun Yat Sen Classical Chinese Garden.

“This is the one that has given bamboo a bad reputation because of its habit of running and invading where it is not wanted. But 12 years ago, that’s all there was to buy,” says Lang.

Today, he has collected more than 60 different varieties, many of them rare and unusual varieties, most of which grow well here in the Pacific Northwest.

In the process, he has also been able to establish a thriving supply business called Bamboo Botanicals.

“Every time I would travel abroad, I would track down new varieties of bamboo to add to my collection.

“Two became four, four became eight and it wasn’t long before I had dozens of different bamboos.

Borinda albocerea

“There are more than 1,400 species worldwide. Colour variations can be stunning — green, yellow, brown, black, red to hues of blue. Some species are striped green, yellow, pink, brown and black. And the leaves can be just as diverse.”

On Saturday, Lang will take some of his best bamboo to display at a Bamboo Festival from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the Dr. Sun Yat-sen Classical Chinese Garden at 578 Carrall St. in Vancouver’s Chinatown.

It will be an opportunity for gardeners nervous about planting bamboo to see a wide variety of unusual cultivars and to learn more about how to grow them, both in the ground and in containers.

Lang will bring some of his all-time favourites to town, including Phyllostachys edulis ‘Heterocycla’ with canes that have a beautiful tortoise shell texture, Qiongzhuea tumidissinoda, also known as the Chinese walking stick bamboo because of the swollen disk-like nodes that give the canes a distinctive ornamental look, and Thamnocalamus crassinodus ‘Kew Beauty,’ which has elegant reddish-brown canes.

Black bamboo.

Some of the striking green striped bamboos should also capture attention, especially the golden vivax (Phyllostachys vivax ‘Aureocaulis’), which has culms with bright yellow and green stripes.

The most popular bamboo of them all with local gardeners, the black-stemmed Phyllostachys nigra, widely admired for its jet-black culms and beautiful green foliage, will be prominently featured, along with Fargesia robusta, arguably the best of the clumping bamboos because of its ability to deliver tall, leafy culms, while at the same time being non-invasive.

However, Lang says he spent more time than he liked dealing with a never-ending stream of calls about problem running bamboos.

“I am continually being asked how to control invasive timber bamboo,” he says. “Most people want to know how to get rid of it completely. They want it gone forever. That can be a problem.”

The most effective but most labour-intensive method of doing this is to dig it up and remove every piece of rhizome. Unfortunately, rhizomes can run a considerable distance from the main grove.

“You need to follow every trail and get every last bit to be successful,” he says. “It can run 20 or 30 feet in any direction and even sneak under concrete driveways and you’d never know it until suddenly a shoot pops up on the other side.”

Another way of controlling invasive bamboo is what Lang calls “the patient option.” This involves clear-cutting canes. “You have to remove every single leaf and this will ultimately deprive the plant of energy and it will slowly die. But it can take years, depending on the size of the grove.”

Bamboo also hates water, so waterlogging is another method, but you have to make sure the water stays constantly around the roots and doesn’t seep away or you only encourage the bamboo to grow.

The most realistic option is to understand bamboo and learn to work with it.

Bamboo is shallow rooted (that’s a good thing) and expands horizontally.

“The majority of bamboos shoot in spring or early summer. If a shoot emerges in an area where it is not wanted, it can be removed by severing it at ground level.

“Shoots are very soft and tender and can be broken off effortlessly by simply kicking it or twisting it off by hand,” says Lang.

An even more effective method of eradicating it is to prune rhizomes, which involves severing the rhizome completely.

“The best tool for the job is a sharp, flat-bottomed spade,” says Lang. “Plunging the spade into the soil will sever the rhizomes. Repeat this around the whole perimeter of your bamboo grove. Then pull out the severed rhizomes outside the perimeter.”

Large, older, well established bamboo groves can be a bit more tedious to deal with. The rhizomes are thicker and generally harder.

“Severing them with a garden spade involves a lot more force and effort. In extreme cases, a saw or tree pruners may need to be used,” he says.

The best solution, of course, is not to plant running bamboo in the first place. Clumping bamboo is less problematic; simply, it is slower growing and doesn’t run.

However, Lang says more aggressive timber bamboos are prettier and generally provide the tall, lush, screening look most people are looking for.

The secret to success to growing running bamboo, he says is to make sure you first install a quality containment method, such as digging a trench and laying down a barrier using HDPE (high density polyethylene).

“This is light, flexible and easier to install than concrete and metal. Most notably, it does not corrode, crack or deteriorate. It comes in rolls of varying thicknesses and widths,” he says.

“Every few years, you need to reduce the root system. Usually, you can tell when the leaves of the bamboo are less green and vigorous. It means the clump has run out of space.”

Many people use bamboo to create a privacy screen. On a balcony, some of the smaller, clumping bamboos are ideal for this purpose as they thrive well in containers.

In this group, the best ones are mostly varieties of borinda, chusquea and fargesia. The majority grow 10 to 15 feet (3 to 4.5 metres), while a few can grow taller and few grow less than 10 feet.

Thamnocalamus ‘Kew Beauty’ is popular because it is relatively slow growing and has canes that start out grey-blue and turn brownish red, almost burgundy.

Dwarf bamboos are another option for gardeners looking for low-screening plants to grow in either containers or as a ground cover.

Pleioblastus ‘Akebono’ is a variety native to Japan with distinctive white-tipped leaves that reaches only 60 cm (2 feet) high and has a slow-growing habit while Sasa veitchii is a Chinese bamboo that grows (90 cm to 1.2 m, 3 to 5 feet) high and has the subtle variegation of white edging on its dark green leaves.

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